Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — Little more than a week after Groundhog Day, evidence is mounting that lawmakers
have all but wrapped up their most consequential work of 2014, at least until the results of the
fall elections are known.

“We’ve got a lot of things on our plate,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester, said
recently when asked what Congress will be busy with this year, but he predicted no breakthrough
accomplishments on immigration, taxes or any other area.

“Why don’t we just pack up and go home?” countered House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of
California after Boehner blamed President Barack Obama for lack of movement on immigration. “What
we’re supposed to do is legislate and not make up excuses as to why we don’t.”

A Senate-passed immigration bill has fallen into the congressional equivalent of a black hole in
the House, where conservative critics cite a changing series of reasons for not wanting to take
action.

Initially, they said they didn’t want to vote on a bill because they oppose amnesty for
immigrants living in the country illegally. Then conservatives said it would be a political mistake
to shift focus away from their opposition to the health-care law, which unites them, and to an
issue that divides them.

Most recently, Boehner, who has said repeatedly that he wants to pass an immigration bill, has
joined others in citing a lack of trust with Obama as a reason for inaction.

Immigration legislation is hardly the only area in which inaction is the likeliest outcome.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has made it clear he doesn’t intend to seek passage
of a second Obama priority, this one a bill to facilitate passage of trade deals with Europe and
Asia.

“I’m against fast-track,” said the man who sets the Senate’s agenda, referring to the measure
Obama wants. “I think everyone would be well-advised just to not push this right now.”

The legislation is opposed by large segments of organized labor, the very unions that Democrats
will be counting on to pour money and manpower into their bid to hold control of the Senate in the
November election.

Republicans need to gain six seats to win a majority. They say they increasingly are bullish
about their prospects, with the country generally pessimistic about the future, Obama’s
favorability ratings well below the levels of his re-election campaign, and controversies
afflicting the president’s health-care law.

Although Reid hasn’t said so, other lawmakers and aides speculate that trade could top the
agenda of any postelection session of Congress.

An overhaul of tax laws seems further off than it did a year ago. There was scant evidence of
progress in 2013, and now a transition is occurring in the Senate Finance Committee, where Sen. Ron
Wyden, D-Ore., has yet to announce his priorities as incoming chairman. He will succeed Sen. Max
Baucus, D-Mont., who was confirmed on Thursday as ambassador to China.

Deficit reduction, the driving force of the tea party-heavy House majority, now occupies a back
seat, and the projected deficit for the current budget year is the lowest since George W. Bush was
in the White House.

Republicans do not appear likely to compromise anytime soon on an increase in the minimum wage
or other items on Obama’s agenda.

The first bill the Democrats put on the Senate floor this year, to renew benefits for the
long-term unemployed, is stalled by Republican opposition. Even an eventual compromise wouldn’t be
much to brag about: Congress has passed similar bills repeatedly in the wake of past economic
downturns.

Not that much of significance has been done up until now.

With much fanfare, lawmakers recently completed work on a five-year farm bill — two years
late.

By month’s end, lawmakers are virtually certain to raise the nation’s debt limit. That, too, is
a relatively routine measure, even if in recent years it has passed only after considerable
brinkmanship.

Another potential area for compromise is legislation to overhaul the system for reimbursing
doctors who treat Medicare patients, but the bipartisan supporters of a measure along those lines
have yet to agree on how to offset the cost.